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November 25, 2005
 He's back, and this time, he's dancing. Yes, Pillsbury's highly recognizable "Poppin Fresh" character (c.1973) is now showing off his dance moves on the web. Visitors to the site www.pillsbury.com/AALL/ can choreograph this little guy's moves, and then email the finished routine to friends. I must say, his vitality and enthusiasm does seem to put the dancing baby to shame, but then again, I always thought that cgi baby was just strange. And while Poppin Fresh knows how to party, his acting abilities are put to the test in a number of different ads also available here and here, complete with 'outtakes'.I did a quick online search into "Poppin Fresh's" family history, and I came across The Advertising Icon Museum online at www.advertisingiconmuseum.com. I hadn't planned on visiting Kansas City this evening, but so is the nature of the web. I was re-introduced to the entire Pillsbury family: Granmommer, Granpopper, the dog Flapjack, the cat Biscuit, Bun Bun, Popper, Poppie, and of course, Poppin Fresh. The museum actually has a 5 foot tall version of Poppin Fresh, and a seven foot tall Jolly Green Giant (one of only three in the world). And of course, there's lots more...about 1,000 more characters, including the oldest piece - a 1939 ceramic Heinz Aristocrat Tomato, complete with top hat and monocle. The Advertising Icon Museum opens to new digs in the fall of 2007 in Kansas City.  
Comments:
I just thought I'd add the complete item description for posterity...
"F1837 PILLSBURY DOUGHBOY Orig StopMotion Puppet Casting Vintage, Original Foam Rubber Casting of "Poppin' Fresh, The Pillsbury Doughboy" In 1979 I moved to Los Angeles from Dallas, Texas and secured my first visual effects job at Coast Visual Effects in North Hollywood. My supervisor was Phil Kellison, whose long career included work on George Pal's Puppetoons and the feature films The Giant Behemoth, The Black Scorpion, and Jack the Giant Killer, among many more. Phil was one of the original team that created the Pillsbury Doughboy character at Cascade Pictures in the 1960s, along with animator Jim Danforth and others. The technique at the time was frame-by-frame stop motion animation, pioneered by Willis O'Brien (King Kong, Mighty Joe Young) and Ray Harryhausen (The 7th Voyage of Sinbad, Jason and the Argonauts, Clash of the Titans), long before the advent of CGI computer animation (which is how the Doughboy is rendered today). Having done a fair amount of stop motion and armature building back in Dallas, I was originally hired at Coast as a general assistant, loading film and animating simple jobs. After a while, Phil assigned me to animate 4 Doughboy commercials since their lead animator, Laine Liska, had his hands full with a series of Speedy Alka-Selter commercials. This was quite a thrill for me at the time, and I very much enjoyed the experience of animating little "Poppin' Fresh" (scroll down to the bottom of this auction listing to see a few photos taken at the time of me working on one of the Doughboy spots). The item offered here is one of the actual foam rubber castings of the body (no replacement heads are included), unpainted. I think this casting was rejected because the foam mixture cured up a bit too firm for ease of animation, although this body casting is still pliable and has neither "hardened" nor disintegrated as many stop motion models tend to do. I retrieved this from the studio as a souvenir (with Phil's permission), but, as I have another painted body in my collection, have decided to let it go. The "flanges" around the perimeter of the body are "flashing" caused by the liquid foam seeming into the seams in the mold during foam rubber injection. These are, of course, normally trimmed away and the seams filled in with latex. This casting has yellowed a bit over time, but is still pretty close to the color of the raw foam rubber when cured, prior to painting. In one of the photos below you can see the holes in the bottom of the "feet" -- the armature was bolted into the mold during casting, and these holes alo served as access for the "tie-down" screws that extended up from beneath the set and held the puppet in place. **NOTE: This is a casting of the foam rubber body only, and does not include the armature or any of the replacement heads. This is a unique, one-of-a-kind, vintage, original stop motion puppet casting from 1979 and is being offered from my private collection as a vintage artifact and collector's item. I did not create this item for the sake of mass-production and will not make any castings or knockoffs of this piece. As such, this does not violate copyright or trademark restrictions or merchandising rights. No rights to the character are granted here by this purchase, and commercial duplication or other use is not permitted. Item will be accompanied by a Certificate of Authenticity signed by me and indicating the details of origin as mentioned above. You can verify my professional standing on the Internet Movie Database." written by Ernest D. Farino on ebay... http://imdb.com/name/nm0267495/?fr=c2l0ZT1kZnxteD0yMHxsbT01MDB8ZmI9dXxwbj0wfHE9ZXJuZXN0IGZhcmlub3xodG1sPTF8bm09b24_;fc=1;ft=20 |
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